SONNET, 1977

Now the sun and the wind will continue to dieand the rain soaks my destiny,because time reverts me/to a pilgrim,because it's only coldness that/I feel.The storm of mourning drives me crazyand I see the slums sailingand the children who still live thinkingof the sad harmony that brings poverty.And the remembered breath will die,the song and seagulls of my world,the hopes, the sun, that/buries itselfin the solemn altar, banished.And look at the wound that won’t closeand the cries of my accumulating slums.

Translator Bio: Ariel Francisco is the author of All My Heroes Are Broke (C&R Press, 2017) and Before Snowfall, After Rain (Glass Poetry Press, 2016). Born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents, he completed his MFA at Florida International University in Miami. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets, The American Poetry Review, Best New Poets 2016, Gulf Coast, Washington Square, and elsewhere. He lives and teaches in South Florida.

Author Bio: Francisco Henriquez was born in Santiago, Dominican Republic in 1957. He graduated from the Dominican Journalism Institute in 1979 and in the same year immigrated to New York City where he attended Hostos Community College. His poetry has been published in magazines and newspapers throughout Argentina, Dominican Republic, New York, and Florida. He currently lives in Orlando where he is the coordinator of the writing group "La Tertulia de Orlando.”